RE: Meritocracy is Dead - Diversity and Privilege in Higher Education
Simply remarkable article and videos. It could not have been written any better. I'm sending a link to my family and friends. I subscribe to Doug Casey (the author and renowned speculator) and several of his financial newsletters and often get emailed articles he has written. He has written extensively about this same topic. We are facing an inflection point in history when I'm sure it won't be possible to turn this ship around.
Imagine if we chose professional athletes for NFL or NBA or Soccer based on diversity requirements or we selected our olympians bases on a requirement for equal number of Asian Americans, African American, Hispanics, Japanese Americans, etc. It would be nothing less than pure nonsense. Whether in sports or in hiring, you simply select the best based on merit and you ignore all the race, sex, size, shape, attractiveness, etc. All the noise being written about diversity and the shaming has reached a truly epic moment. I can't imagine having a business and not hiring the best person that can help the business compete and succeed. Period. But if the media keeps writing the diversity nonsense, eventually all the kids will grow up to believe the lies.
My first job after engineering grad school was at GM in one of their manufacturing plants. They were dying for lack of engineers to support the plant. The issue was a hiring freeze, unless it was a woman! A plant can be a pretty rotten place to work. There were few woman who wanted one of these manufacturing positions. Remarkably stupid. During this same position at GM, I learned that in order to make the cut of entering an apprenticeship program for a skilled trade, you had to pass an aptitude exam. However, if you had a certain color skin or were a woman they made sure you got in. There was a really nice African American woman who was an electrician. Overtime was offered to the tradesmen and tradeswomen in a balanced and fair way. I had this electrician on my shift for overtime several times. A piece of equipment would be down, I would ask for her help and she would ask me to tell her what I wanted her to do. Man or women, young or old, tall or short, didn't matter. What mattered was the aptitude requirement that was overlooked and the business suffered by having to always find workarounds.
I up-vote, resteemed and I'm following. I look forward to more articles!
Thanks for your thoughtful response. Your hypothetical about diversity in sports is one step closer to reality with the recent decision by the International Olympic Committee that transgenders can compete in the Olympics as their preferred identity. See here: "IOC rules transgender athletes can take part in Olympics without surgery" As you emphasize in your reply, it should be about merit, and as we would all suspect, I cannot agree enough.
I too am concerned that ever more people, especially among the young, believe that privileging one's subjective belief system over demonstrably objective truths is valid and does not have potentially negative consequences. I do however see what many are waking up to, and that many kids in Generation Z, growing up in the wake of the Millennials, sees that "something just isn't right" and isn't running off the cliff behind them. See one of many treatments of the topic here: "The student Left's culture of introlerance is creating a new generation of conservatives".
Aptitude and a good attitude are always advantageous! Thanks for the resteem!
Since you were looking forward to my next contributions, I thought I would let you know I have posted a few more since you visited my blog last! Cheers!